In this picture, taken at a local prairie, there are at least eight different types of flowers all in bloom at the same time (click it to see a larger version -- how many different kinds can you find?). I find this extravagant. And of course the flowers catch our attention, but there are probably dozens of other plant species, several kinds of small animals and thousands of species of insects, spiders and other invertebrates hidden in the few square yards captured in this picture. It seems that when God created, He wasn't content with "just enough" and He didn't stop with "plenty"-- creation is overflowing with the superabundance of His creativity and delight!
I remember a Far Side cartoon entitled something like "God creates the snake" which depicted God rolling out long strands of play-doh as any preschooler would and exclaiming "Oooo. These are easy!" While there's a lot in the cartoon we might take issue with if we took the cartoonist's view seriously, I'm convinced that God thorougly enjoyed the process of creation and delighted in the rich diversity and myraids of variations in the plants and creatures He created. In a 2005 article entitled "Somewhere Out There, Millions of Species Await Discovery," Tina Butler writes that the current number of identified species in all kingdoms comes to about 1.75 million but that 15-20,000 new species of animals alone are discovered every year and that the UN Global Diversity Assessment estimates that there may be as many as 13.6 million species out there! If these estimates are anywhere near accurate, not only do we "not know the half of it," we don't even know a fifth of it!
So why this extravagance? I find it difficult to imagine such extravagance being the product of a grim, harsh survival of the fittest kind of process. I believe it's yet another expression of God's glory in His creation-- a demonstration of His creativity, power and, for lack of a better word, completeness. He doesn't do things partway: "Well, here are three different types of flower for the prairie environment -- that ought to do it!"
And it's a gift. We don't live in a boring world. Imagine having to tell your children, "Sorry, honey, there really isn't anything new left to discover..." We are apparently only scratching the surface (and of course, that's not even counting how much we don't know about the species we do "know"!)
